Caroline Kim was born in Busan, South Korea, but moved to America at a young age. Her newly released collection of short stories,
The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
At Electric Lit, Kim tagged "ten contemporary books that enlarge our understanding of Korean America and introduce characters who, until now, haven’t existed seriously in literature," including:
Drifting House by Krys Lee
This is one of my favorite collections of short stories, and “The Salaryman” is my favorite in this collection. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Krys Lee takes us into the life of one of the many faceless white-collar workers one 
sees packed into South Korea’s subway trains, one of many not thriving in Korea’s golden economic boom. After losing his job, Mr. Seo lives on the street with other jobless men like himself, so ashamed they can’t go home to their families. Instead they spend their time waiting in line for free food, dreaming of driving trucks or working as laborers in America, contemplating selling their kidneys for cash, and lying to their families. One such man “will call his parents and his wife, as he does every week, pretending to be in America. He will tell his parents that he, the oldest son, is their guarantee. He will promise to bring his wife over after he gets settled.”
Read about
the other entries on the list.
The Page 69 Test: Drifting House.
--Marshal Zeringue
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